She Sold 140 Homes a Year With No Internet and No Assistants with Lucy Ham

Lucy [00:00:00] We never really had a goal before about hiring, so we didn't know how to do it, and we didn't have a goal, so we weren't going anywhere. But Justin and I have figured out that if your buyer agents leave, guess who's showing houses? It's us, and we don't want to be that.

Suneet Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Reside Platform Podcast. I'm your host today, Suneet Agarwal. Today we’re meeting with Lucy Hamm. Lucy runs the Lucy Hamm Group out of Flushing, Michigan, and I’m stoked to talk to her today and learn more about her business and insights from her success in the industry for many years.

Suneet Lucy, how’s it going?

Lucy It’s going well. We’re getting springtime in Michigan.

Suneet Yeah, so that means nice weather and a busier market, right?

Lucy That’s right. Everybody’s waking up and wants to get outside and buy something.

Suneet Yeah. So tell me about Flushing. Is it a big city, small city?

Lucy [00:01:00] Flushing is about 30,000 people, a suburb of Flint—one of Flint’s suburbs. It’s a little historic town. The building I own and have my office in downtown is built in 1890. That’s how historic it is. The whole town looks like that. There’s a bakery across the street that’s old as the hills, but super good. So yeah, that’s the kind of town it is.

Lucy Sleepy and s—

Suneet It sounds like a cool place. So let’s go to the beginning. You got started in real estate in 1974. Is that right?

Lucy That’s correct.

Suneet How did you get into it?

Lucy [00:02:00] I was assistant to the controller of a corporation, and I was about to have a child. I was working 12, 14, 16 hours a day and knew that was not what I wanted to do or would be able to do. So I thought maybe real estate would be very flexible hours—not knowing it’d be 24/7 flexible.

Lucy The minute we had our baby, I went from hours at the controller’s office from 7:00 AM to 1:00. In the afternoon I would be home, doing real estate and taking care of things at home. That’s really how I got started. After a year, I would work afternoons. I would have one open house every Saturday—two hours—and I had church friends, and that’s it, because I was new. This was in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. That’s all the people I knew, so if they walked into my open house, they were mine.

Lucy And it’s amazing—when you only have a couple people, you take really good care of them and you find them stuff fast. Nobody slipped through the cracks on that one. But yeah, that was the start of it, a long time ago.

Suneet Yes. And then you moved to Flushing and started over.

Suneet It’s interesting because nowadays—and you hear it all the time, and you’re in the same conversations that we’re having in Reside—so much of real estate is internet and computers and all this stuff. So in the ’70s, what did you have, like a Thomas Guide?

Lucy [00:03:00] We had a phone. A phone and a phone book, and a multiple listing book that’s about two inches thick. You’d get a sold book once a year. Customers would say, “Could I have that when you’re done?” And we’re like, “No,” because on the front it said “$1,000 fine if you give it away.”

Lucy So it was all phone and paper.

Suneet And all the information then was super gated to real estate agents.

Lucy Oh, yeah. People could not find out what anything sold for unless they went and sat at the register of deeds. They wouldn’t know, and they didn’t know how to do that.

Lucy So actually that was good. It was kind of good.

Suneet I didn’t know that the information was gated like that.

Lucy And it was pretty rare that someone would ask, “Is this a good price for this community?” We didn’t have to give them comps. I mean, we did in a way, but we didn’t have to give them comps or anything.

Lucy So yeah, we really were on our own.

Suneet It had like 70 gigs.

Suneet All right, for everyone watching and listening—it’s super interesting. My Google Chrome just crashed while we were recording. But Lucy and I were talking about her business—real estate business—and everything going on in Flushing, with no internet and no publicly accessible information.

Suneet [00:05:00] So it shows in here too that you became the number one agent—or top—you became one of the top agents. Were you number one in Prudential?

Lucy I was number two in Prudential.

Suneet Number two. Okay. And was that for units sold or GCI?

Lucy It was units sold.

Suneet Do you remember how many units it was?

Lucy I think it was like 125 to 140.

Suneet So many.

Lucy So many. And they gave awards for units sold. They gave awards for GCI also. I wasn’t GCI because most of the time in Flint, Michigan, our average sales price is quite a bit less than most of the world.

Suneet Sure. What year was that where you were number two?

Lucy That would’ve been 1982—probably ’82, ’83, ’84.

Suneet [00:06:00] Lucy, how are you selling 140 homes in the ’80s? I’ve never heard of anything like that.

Lucy I had no assistants until I was selling about 125 transactions a year on my own because nobody had assistants. It wasn’t acceptable. Nobody did that. So I hired somebody to just make copies and order title insurance—just at the office.

Lucy And this is not to brag, but what I find is that I’ve been here a long time—whatever I do, a lot of other people start doing it. It’s like a halftime assistant—people would get an assistant. Some of them talked bad about it, and then they would go do it. Now they tell me after many years, “Whatever you did, we did it.” If you are successful, they’re going to do exactly what you do, and they’re watching.

Suneet Yes.

Lucy They’re watching.

Suneet So all that business pre-internet, pre-cellphone—it’s not even—I can’t even make sense. You’re a phenom. Make it make sense. I don’t get it.

Lucy [00:07:00] I was motivated. I had a husband in college, and then I was a single parent for a while.

Lucy I was raised on a farm. We were in South Dakota in the middle of the sticks. There was Indian reservations, and there was us. We were pretty much off the grid other than buying sugar and flour. We worked, we made money, we saved money. That’s just what we did.

Lucy I like to work. I’m not 20 anymore, and I still like to work.

Suneet Sure.

Suneet Where did the business come from? Were you prospecting a bunch back then?

Lucy No. I would take floor time probably once a week—two, three hours of what they called floor time.

Lucy And people at my church. Really it was just people I would meet, neighbors and church. That’s about it. You really could do a lot of business by just talking to the people in your sphere, your little small sphere, and just being a good person.

Lucy If you wanted to buy or sell, they called me.

Suneet [00:08:00] Yes. Operating from principle. How about having charisma and being outgoing? There’s so many people now who just hide and expect things to fall in their lap, and then they’re surprised when it doesn’t.

Lucy Yeah. Another advantage too—when we were on the farm, people stopped by our house all the time. We always had coffee and dessert. It was always ready 24/7. We didn’t have any strangers. Everybody would stop in at anybody’s house they wanted.

Lucy There were no movies. There was nothing. This town had 100 people. They were all Dutch. The only entertainment was church—Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday evening. That was our social. So we really learned as children: you visit with people. This is what we do. Families would come over and visit. You play, you visit. It was all one-on-one stuff.

Lucy Back then, I look back—it was pretty archaic, but that’s what we learned.

Suneet [00:09:00] It’s so good. So now you fast-forward and you brought your son, who’s seen you working his entire life. Is that right?

Lucy Yes—from birth.

Suneet He’s seen you working, and now he’s working alongside you. What was that journey of him getting into the business?

Lucy He always wanted to be a geologist—studied dirt and rocks all his life—and he did. He became a geologist at University of Michigan. Did that for 10 years, worked for Schlumberger. He’s traveled all over the world.

Lucy [00:10:00] And then after 10 years, he called me one day and said, “I just figured out that in 25 years I’m going to be sitting in my boss’s office making a little more money doing exactly the same thing.” And he had just read Rich Dad Poor Dad.

Lucy He said, “You know what? I want to come to work for you.” I was in shock. I said, “I’ve got to think about this.” Not that I didn’t want him to do that.

Lucy So I went back to him and I said, “The only way we can do this—I don’t know how to teach you, I’m really not a teacher, I just go full speed ahead—you have to have a coach.” I had a Mike Ferry coach; he had to get a Mike Ferry coach. Then he could work for me, because I knew they would train him.

Lucy He was a people person—project manager as a geologist—so he does well. He has a different motivation. I don’t work 24/7, but I work until the work’s done.

Lucy He has a more confined schedule with his family and his kids.

Suneet So he gives himself a daily deadline.

Lucy He does.

Suneet [00:11:00] For many people, having that deadline is enough to get the day wrapped up faster. But for others, a deadline’s a deadline. If I’m bored and I want to go do something for work—

Lucy I’ll just come in here and do it real fast. Deadlines can happen later.

Suneet I couldn’t—

Lucy —find during the day.

Lucy Most evenings, and my husband will tell you, most evenings I’ll take a half hour—6:30 to 7:00, 8:00 to 8:30—and call those people I couldn’t find during the day.

Lucy And I have no guilt about that because these are people I’ve been working with—business—and usually I can find them. Everybody comes home at bedtime.

Suneet Yeah.

Lucy And it sets up my next day, really.

Suneet [00:12:00] Totally. I love that—the preparation for the next day and having a clear plan—that’s how you win.

Suneet When did you get in the Mike Ferry organization, Lucy?

Lucy About 25 years ago. I’m not being coached by them right now the last couple years, but for about 20, 25 years. And I coached for them for five or six years also.

Lucy I was in a head-on collision probably 15 years ago, and I’d always thought, “I want to be a coach.” I walked away—I was not hurt—and my car was totaled. I called them and said, “I always wanted to be a coach. This is what happened.” They said, “Okay, great.” So I was a coach for five or six years, but I realized my business needed me. I don’t have tons of people here, so my business needed me. I went back into just business and continued.

Suneet Absolutely. It’s super hard to drive growth in an organization when your time is split.

Lucy Yeah. I was trying to help other people be whatever they wanted to be.

Suneet Exactly.

Suneet [00:13:00] So from being in Mike Ferry organization for so long, at some point you started doing the heavy prospecting. Is that right?

Lucy Oh, absolutely. Probably after a couple of years, I still used my script—whatever that was. It took me a couple years to actually use his scripts. And to be honest—this isn’t a Mike Ferry advertisement—but when I started using his scripts, cold turkey, I’d just read them. The customer didn’t know I was reading them.

Lucy My return on getting the listing went up like 25% immediately. I took 25% more of the listings I went out on because it was a plan. I didn’t sit there for hours. I asked the questions, got it done, got it signed—that’s what I needed.

Suneet Yeah. And that’s how we know each other—through coaching.

Suneet Mike Ferry is great. Tom Ferry is great. Bill Pipes is great. Buffini’s great. They’re all great. I think we’re the best, but it’s all great because you get something to plug into and follow along.

Lucy That’s right.

Suneet [00:14:00] I’ve never been a part of Mike Ferry organization, but I’ve been to a bunch of events, and they changed my life 100%.

Suneet It’s cool to see everyone dressed up in suits and all formal—it’s a good vibe. If anyone listening, if you haven’t been to a Mike Ferry event, look into one. They have them all the time. What’s it called—Superstar Retreat?

Lucy Superstar and Production Retreat.

Suneet Those are in Las Vegas usually these days, I think—because it’s an easy drive for Mike.

Lucy Or San Diego.

Suneet Or San Diego. Just make sure that if you’re a man, you wear a suit, and if you’re a woman, you have a business formal outfit on also.

Suneet Now with Justin in the business, how do you define the lanes, and how do you keep the business from bleeding into family time?

Lucy [00:15:00] He lives in Ann Arbor, an hour away, so he is our Ann Arbor office. Our main office is in Flushing. We have lunch together on Fridays—mom-son lunch. At first we talk about business, then we talk about whatever.

Lucy The family-business-bleeding time—he always calls me Lucy at work. At work, we’re business. That’s not hard.

Lucy He and I take the listings. When the calls come in, if they don’t ask for me or him, I take two, he takes one, because my corporation has to pay the bills.

Lucy Over time, you see what his talents are and what my talents are. If I could just list properties all day long, I’d be happy. He is really good at teaching. He’s good at confronting. He’s good at logic.

Lucy He gets paid a stipend per month to do some of the managing because he and I are running the place. I totally appreciate that because then I can keep doing what I want to do and make more money.

Suneet I love it. Do you know Tim and Margie Moldenhauer?

Lucy Yes, I do.

Suneet [00:16:00] How long have you known them for?

Lucy I used to coach Margie—maybe 10, 15 years or so.

Suneet Your story is really similar—Justin calling you Lucy at the office, Tim calls Margie at the office.

Suneet As a dad with two kids, I understand what you said—especially after Justin went to school and had the job—“Are you sure you want to throw it away and get into this business?” Did those thoughts ever go through your head?

Lucy Oh, yeah. Absolutely.

Lucy And what we do is—he does a draw. He’s on a draw. When he gets a commission check, we take the draw out. It’s continuity for him. You know these businesses—you’ve got a lot of money one month, and the next month you almost can’t make cash flow.

Lucy For him, it’s a little more that way, which is fine with me because it evens out.

Lucy And it’s nice to see the talents come out. At one time, I was about ready to be done with real estate because I was overwhelmed. I didn’t have enough people, and I learned that too late usually.

Lucy [00:18:00] My coach said, “What would make you excited about real estate again?” I said, “If I could have a week a month off.” He said, “Okay. By next week, I want you to have 12 weeks vacation planned.”

Lucy So I do take a week a month off. When I’m gone, he’s here. We cover for each other. He’s gone right now for a few days, so I’m him. That’s very helpful.

Suneet You take a week off every month. Do you go anywhere fun?

Lucy Sometimes it’s fun. My daughter and her family are in Dallas. We have a condo on the beach in Florida. Sometimes it’s vacation. Last week it was Arizona just for fun. It’s all kinds of different things.

Suneet That’s great. I need to plan for that one day.

Lucy You need a coach that tells you to do it.

Suneet [00:19:00] People are listening, and you’re saying, “Hey, I take a week off every month.” That’s inspirational.

Suneet So many agents—you ask them when the last time they took a day off—they’re like, “Day off? I don’t know what that is.” What do you think had to happen for you to do that in running your personal business?

Lucy I did that because I love to leave town. When I leave town, I work like a dog the last four or five days. I list so many properties, get everything done, clear my desk.

Lucy When I come back, I have to do the same thing. But I get tons of stuff done the week before I go, and I leave, and I really don’t look back.

Lucy The first day my phone might ring a few times, but I just call my office and tell them to take care of it. I don’t think about it. I don’t lose sleep over it. I just leave.

Lucy And I pray for all my customers. They’re all going to be fine. They won’t miss me. I give it up, and then I’m done. Out of here.

Suneet [00:20:00] What does the support staff look like to support you guys in the business?

Lucy We have an office manager, a listing coordinator, a closing manager, and we have two buyer agents. And I do have a part-time person that’s helping me get through calling every single person in my database once a quarter.

Lucy There’s 13,000 people in there, but we have 9,000 phone numbers.

Suneet Awesome. And are you the managing broker for the office too?

Lucy Yeah. Jess and I are both brokers, but I’m the managing broker.

Suneet Awesome. So what’s the goal for recruiting and growing the business?

Lucy [00:21:00] We have learned a lot from Reside, and our goal is to have six buyer agents hired by December because we think that if we hire six, we’ll probably have four for sure.

Suneet So what’s the plan to get those six in your small town?

Lucy Well, we hired another one, but she’s already out of here. But I plan to hire four more.

Suneet What has been some challenges you’ve had as you’ve tried to bring on these agents?

Lucy [00:22:00] I had a completely different mindset about hiring. I had mentioned it to people once in a while, and I would think, “Well, nobody wants to move.” My mental was: nobody wants to move.

Lucy So now with Reside—John Sheplack, Ross—all those—a lot of people do want to move. Justin and I and our office manager make calls to agents, and mostly they don’t respond to anybody but me. So my office manager says it’s me, but she does it out of my email.

Lucy Most of the people that we contact are like, “Well, that is so great. Not right now, but maybe three months, maybe…” There’s a maybe about most of them. Most of them are kind of maybe.

Lucy So we ask them to come—“Let me just help you grow your business, whether you come with us or not. You teach us.” We have a different mindset this year and a different goal this year.

Lucy We never really had a goal before about hiring, so we didn’t know how to do it. We didn’t have a goal, so we weren’t going anywhere. Justin and I have figured out that if your buyer agents leave, guess who’s showing houses? It’s us, and we don’t want to be that.

Suneet Yes. Something tells me you have a lot of listings. Am I right?

Lucy [00:23:00] Yeah. We have 50, 60 most of the time.

Suneet In a town of 30,000, so your sign is everywhere.

Lucy It is.

Suneet You guys are doing radio and billboards and all that?

Lucy No billboards. We don’t do radio right now. We’re just doing TV. Radio and Television Experts—that’s how I met you.

Suneet Shout out to Matt Wagner. Television—so you have ads going with Barbara?

Lucy Yes, Barbara Corcoran.

Suneet Good.

Suneet [00:24:00] We coach to doing this to recruit, doing that—putting job ads out, posting on social, making the calls. But I say the number one way to recruit a bunch of agents: have a bunch of listings, sell a bunch of houses.

Suneet Because then you’ve got billboards everywhere. The more houses that you sell, the more signs in the ground you have, the more inbound recruiting leads you’ll get. And when you call someone, they’re honored. They go, “Wow, Lucy Hamm is calling me?”

Lucy They are honored.

Suneet Yes. That’s a huge benefit—not only selling more houses, but it’s easier to recruit.

Suneet What advice do you have for real estate agents—the average real estate agent listening to this?

Lucy [00:25:00] The best thing and the hardest thing is the schedule. I write my schedule Sunday night because I can see where I have to be. Then I fill in a lot of other stuff. Every night I look at tomorrow—“How do I need to dress for tomorrow?”—and I write down every hour what to do.

Lucy And I rarely do exactly what my schedule says, but at least it’s visual—one spot—this is what I’m doing today. If I don’t do it here, I’m going to have to do it here, and vice versa.

Lucy It includes—I never miss my kids’ soccer games or dance recitals. It’s all in there. Go to dinner with my husband, 5:00 tonight. I don’t know where we’re going, but we’re going. Everything is in there.

Lucy Affirmations, 7:00 Friday morning. Role play, 7:30 Friday morning. Everything.

Suneet That is such good advice. That advice changed my life when I was a brand-new agent and I got that through a coaching program.

Suneet I have wake up, I have eat, I have go to bed, I have take a walk, I have read, I have journal. Exercise. Date night with my wife.

Lucy The agents I interview, there might have been one or two so far that had a schedule at all.

Suneet It’s not only agents. It’s people. That level of organization and discipline frightens some people. But they don’t understand that’s the sacrifice you make if you want success.

Lucy The key word is discipline. It is a discipline—even to write it is a discipline. It’s a discipline to not drink alcohol or to drink alcohol, eat too much or not eat too much. It’s all a discipline.

Suneet [00:27:00] Now, what advice do you have for the team leaders listening who want to create something awesome like you have?

Lucy There’s a great book I have—How to Be a Great Boss by Jeffrey Fox. Every chapter’s a little page. It’s the one “expect and inspect,” that kind of thing. It’s a great book. You can just open it to any page and you’ll do it tomorrow.

Lucy One of the things I think we do well here is stop at every door every morning and, “Hey, what’s at the top of your list today?” Or, “What are you planning to do today?” Or, “What are you excited about today?” Just ask everybody a question so they know that you’re in. You’re in.

Suneet That’s such good advice. Isn’t that what John talks about too?

Lucy He does.

Suneet Check in with your agents—because you’re re-recruiting your whole staff every day by showing that you care.

Suneet Lucy, if somebody wants to learn more about your business or send you a referral in Michigan, how do they do it?

Lucy [00:28:00] My email is a good one to remember: Lucy—L-U-C-Y—@lucyham.com. One M in Ham or I won’t get it. Or my cell is 810-961-9566.

Suneet What’s the name of all the markets you guys cover out there?

Lucy Mid-Michigan. That’s the best thing—Mid-Michigan. And if we don’t, we’ll tell you, but we know somebody that does.

Suneet Perfect. If you’ve got any business in Michigan, Lucy just dropped her cell phone number and her email. We’ll also leave that in the description.

Suneet Lucy, what are you excited about right now?

Lucy [00:29:00] I’m excited that we are so busy we can hardly have time to do all the things we need to do. It’s exhilarating to me to be busy—to plan it. The busier I am, the more I delegate. It helps me learn how to delegate.

Suneet Good. What great advice. Thank you so much for being on. I definitely want to talk to you more soon.

Suneet Everybody watching and listening, I hope you got something out of this episode. I did. I think Lucy’s story is legendary, and I can’t wait to see everything they’re doing. Still grinding it out, still in Reside, still listening to John on Monday say KFR and all this stuff.

Suneet Everybody, if you did get something out of it, please like, share, and subscribe. And then we’ll see you on the next episode of the Reside Platform Podcast. Bye-bye.